Correcting misinformation spread by the anti-Dalai Lama Protesters

What “Protesters?”

New Kadampa Shugden Protesters

The International Shugden Community’s (ISC) membership is composed almost entirely of members of the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT), a neo-Buddhist cult based in England. They are not “protesting” in the usual sense of pressuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama to change a policy however; since they are convinced that he is “the worst dictator”, “evil”, and so on, their only real wish is to defame his reputation. Their “protest” campaign is actually a campaign of defamation.

If these loud demonstrations were truly “protests”, one would expect the participants to be Buddhists who wanted His Holiness to change his advice and accept Dolgyal (Shugden) propitiation as beneficial, so that they could once again attend his teachings and especially his initiation ceremonies. But they have no interest in any such connection to the Dalai Lama. Their sole wish is to convince the world he is a “false Dalai Lama”, an “evil dictator”, a Muslim and not a Buddhist, etc. In fact, they are currently already freely propitiating their chosen “deity”. So, in reality, there is no violation of their religious freedom; they are not outcasts or victims of excommunication, and the truth is it is they who are seeking to “cast out” the Dalai Lama and present him to the world as a non-Buddhist!

In fact-checking their pretended purpose and claims, one has only to read the group’s publications, A Great Deception, and The False Dalai Lama, to get a clear picture of their real purpose. In the first of those, the whole 600 year old institution of the Dalai Lamas (the First Dalai Lama was born in 1392) is harshly attacked as an irreligious, political institution and its incumbents, especially from the Great Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) on, denounced as evil persons, merely posing as spiritual teachers. In this first book, and more vehemently in the second, the current Dalai Lama, the Fourteenth, is summarily denounced as “a dictator”, a “Nazi”, a “liar” and so on; these defamatory terms then spill out from these books onto some of the placards held aloft in their demonstrations.

His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

If a fact-checker scans either of the books, even briefly, it becomes clear that the ISC/NKT members who hold these views in no way wish to become the students of the Dalai Lama since they consider him an evil person, a detested enemy, and certainly have no interest in communicating with him. The obvious purpose of their publications and demonstrations therefore is to blacken his reputation, vilify him, and to convince world public opinion that this Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is a harmful, deceitful person.

That this widespread international campaign should coincide so exactly with the propaganda campaign against the Dalai Lama, a campaign long waged by the United Front Department of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China, which is responsible for minority nationality affairs, should give anyone who receives defamatory PR materials from the ISC/NKT considerable pause for reflection.

Further Reading

Dolgyal Shugden pages at

Approving Institutions

Official Tibet Houses are cultural centers of HH the Dalai Lama, non-profit organizations devoted to the preservation of Tibetan culture. This site appears with their approval since, while not responsible for producing the site or its content, the misrepresentations of Tibetan culture generated by this controversy distort and negatively affect the public perception of Tibetan culture.